Rise and fall of Raju, from IT czar to fraudster

CHANGING TIMES AND ETHICS: The man once won the coveted Golden Peacock Award for corporate governance.

Ads by Google

ibnlive.com is on mobile now. Read news, watch videos
be a Citizen Journalist. Log on to m.ibnlive.com NOW!

Related Stories

• Satyam's crack team | Directors shocked | Timeline

• Satyam boss admits fraud, quits | Letter | Probe

• Satyam case: Raju's bail plea dismissed

Photogallery

Find us on Facebook | Join IBNLive community

Stay ahead with G-Talk Buddy | Click now!

  

New Delhi: The IT man of the year, Asia’s business leader, the corporate citizen of the year, excellence in leadership and the Ernst and Young entrepreneur of the year.

All these and more of such titles belong to Byrraju Ramalinga Raju the genius who made the unlikely transition from minor property dealer to global software czar.

Born to a farmer family in Vijaywada in 1954, Raju migrated to Hyderabad in the 60s. His father, Satyanarayana on whom he named his company Satyam kicked off the family fortune while his sons went to school.

Raju senior started a textile business even as he bought massive tracts of land in the city for farming.

After a B.Com at Vijayawada, Raju went on to get an MBA degree from Ohio University in the US.

He dabbled in real estate; manufacturing and his father's grape business till his engineer brother-in-law pushed him into Information Technology and helped him set up Satyam Computer services in 1987.

IT was then in its infancy and off shoring was relatively unknown. So with 20 employees Satyam provided software services to international customers from India.

The big break came with the Y2K boom when Satyam's operations spread to 65 countries turning it into a giant with a turnover $2 bn.

With no background in engineering, Raju had made Satyam the toast of the IT world. But success made him restless and he diversified launching Satyam Infoway and Satyam Enterprises.

Next, Raju jumped into real estate- Maytas Properties Ltd and Maytas Infra Ltd were formed, headed by Raju's sons. Maytas Infra even won the Hyderabad Metro rail project.

Maytas is Satyam spelt backwards.

Ramalinga Raju was the face of Hyderabd's IT boom with powerful political backers. Forbes listed him as one India's richest men.

Business Week put his net worth at a whopping 18,00, 000 rupees. But what took two decades to build has crashed in just two weeks.

The poster boy of India's IT industry is today a fallen angel. The man who once won the coveted Golden Peacock Award for corporate governance will go down in history as the country's biggest corporate fraud.